Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin began writing for parterre box in 2011 under the pen name “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has also appeared in , The New York Times, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he came to opera via the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he began listening to at age 11. His particular enthusiasm is 17th and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre box presenting live recordings.
Ninety-five years ago, Evelyn Lear was born on January 8 in Brooklyn, and Trove Thursday remembers the soprano with one of her earliest successes: Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten co-starring her husband Thomas Stewart, Helmut Krebs and Franz Crass.
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In the past when I’ve read through the scads of year-end best lists, there have always been a few titles that I just didn’t “get” but there were more than usual in 2020.
Trove Thursday follows tradition and bids farewell to 2020 with an operetta: Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe starring Edda Moser as a most commanding Hanna Glawari!
Erato’s irresistible Rossini collection Amici e Rivali is hands down my favorite vocal CD of 2020, featuring the inspired bravura sparrings of Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres.
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
A recent discussion here about Gianna Rolandi prompts Trove Thursday to present the American soprano in a rare trouser role in an even rarer opera, Cimarosa’s Gli Orazi e I Curiazi paired with Anna Caterina Antonacci.
Who will prevail in Trove Thursday’s Fidelio Drag Race finals: Gwyneth Jones/Leonard Bernstein 1970 or Julia Varady/Nikolaus Harnoncourt 1986?
Soprano Erin Wall died in early October, a month shy of her 45th birthday; Trove Thursday remembers her with a 2012 broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering L’Amour de Loin.
With La Scala’s plan to open on December 7 with a new Lucia di Lammermoor thwarted, Trove Thursday sets its Wayback Machine to nearly 50 years ago to present two of the 20th century’s greatest madwomen—Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills—denounced by Plàcido Domingo and Alfredo Kraus respectively, with the former pair consoled by Kurt Moll‘s luxurious Raimundo.
Trove Thursday celebrates early St. Cecilia’s Day—November 22—with a 1976 performance of Licino Refice’s Cecilia starring Renata Scotto as the patron saint of music and musicians.
Tonight at the Met should have welcomed Barrie Kosky’s production of Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel; in its absence Trove Thursday steps in with a recent broadcast featuring this summer’s breakout star Ausrine Stundyte as the enigmatic Renata.
For this, the 250th edition of Trove Thursday, [hold for applause] a broadcast of a memorable evening at Carnegie Hall—and I was there: Smetana’s stirring Libuse, the Czech national opera, with a transcendent Gabriela Benackova as its titular prophetess.
Trove Thursday celebrates the centenary of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella not with the frequently heard orchestral suite but with the complete score in a broadcast featuring appropriately Italian forces including Anna Caterina Antonacci, Francesco Meli and Alex Esposito conducted by Daniele Gatti.
The worldwide “Beethoven 250” celebration hasn’t exactly come off as planned, so Trove Thursday steps up to offer the composer’s rarely-heard oratorio Christus am Ölberge with Jonas Kaufmann typecast in the title role, revered by Luba Orgonásova and Hanno Müller-Brachmann, plus a fleet HIP broadcast of the Choral Fantasy from earlier this year.
Next month in Bergamo Plácido Domingo takes on his zillionth—and possibly final—new role, so Trove Thursday previews it by returning to the same venue 50 years earlier for Donizetti’s Belisario with Leyla Gencer and Renato Bruson, a real baritone as its titular hero.
For the fourth annual edition of “Handel for my birthday” Trove Thursday serves up three heaping portions of “old-fashioned oratorio.”
On the 21st of this month Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani will celebrate her 95th birthday and Trove Thursday salutes her versatility with two markedly different 20th century works: Menotti’s The Consul and Mascagni’s Il Piccolo Marat, one of many collaborations with her husband Nicola Rossi-Lemeni.
While the Met reruns over-familiar HDs, Trove Thursday offers a Puccini rarity: Edgar, the composer’s second opera, starring Latonia Moore and Marcello Giordani.
Joining the Met’s week of bel canto reruns and Tuesday’s premiere of Teatro Nuovo’s exciting new project, Trove Thursday presents Bellini’s I Capuleti ed I Montecchi with Tatiana Troyanos and Cecilia Gasdia.
Trove Thursday began on September 10, 2015, so today we celebrate the podcast’s fifth birthday with a diva-starry Aïda double-bill: Galina Vishnevskaya vies for her soldier-hero with Irina Arkhipova, then Jessye Norman wins the guy (but loses her life) in spite of Mignon Dunn.
As Phaedra’s tragic, all-consuming passion for her stepson Hippolytus has fascinated artists for centuries, Trove Thursday offers two of its lesser-known musical settings: Pizzetti’s opera Fedra with Régine Crespin and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson performing the cantata Phaedra, Britten’s final vocal work.
Few operas scream “summertime easy listening” like Pfitzner’s Palestrina—all 225 minutes of it—so Trove Thursday presents a performance from the Royal Opera’s 1997 New York visit conducted by Christian Thielemann.
Dame Janet Baker turns 87 tomorrow and Trove Thursday celebrates with Handel’s rare Admeto conducted by the great Sir Anthony Lewis in which Baker’s bold Alceste vies with Sheila Armstrong’s sparkling Antigona for her deluded husband Admeto’s affections.
Trove Thursday presents Alzira—derided by some as Verdi’s worst opera—in a 1968 Carnegie Hall concert with Gianfranco Cecchele, Louis Quilico (star of last night’s Met Rigoletto stream) and Elinor Ross, who died in March at age 93.
